Fairfax media’s business story yesterday concerned Deloitte’s annual business survey which found 24% of NZ business people experienced domestic corruption in the past five years. But it was the first sentence which told the true objective. “An increase in bribery and corruption tarnishing New Zealand’s ethical image may be due to an influx of migrants from countries where such practices are normal.” The reporter than cited one recent case of a Chinese developer “allegedly attempting” to bribe an Auckland Council officer as support for this “working theory”. The racist theory was attributed to Ian Tuke (pictured), an associate director of Deloitte in New Zealand. Tuke’s consulting CV touts his many years “dedicated to protecting public and private sector clients from […]

Control of the media is a central aim of every government to varying degrees and for various reasons. We tend to think, to the extent it occurs in New Zealand, the manipulation is relatively innocuous. Nicky Hager’s book Dirty Politics, released last year, gave us a peak at the dust on the frost which accumulates on the crust of the tip of the press deception iceberg in New Zealand. This keyhole view, limited to a few conservative politicians, still offended the sensitivities of many New Zealanders. On 10 March 2015, the New Zealand Herald ran a story of a Wellington man’s apparent abuse of the New Zealand court system. Under the close-up photo of a Lotto ticket (replicated here), the […]

New Zealand has been without the disinfecting justice of the Privy Council for more than a decade, after the Supreme Court Act 2003 formed our own final court to replace it. So why is the Privy Council still ordering release of the wrongfully convicted in New Zealand? Last week, the Privy Council ordered conviction quashed for Teina Pora after 21 years in a New Zealand prison for rape and murder. If the Crown decides to retry him, it will be the third time. Pora is one of a never ending list of convictions overturned by the Privy Council, highlighting a notable failure with the highest appellate court by right in New Zealand, the Court of Appeal. Mark Lundy, another whose […]

High Court Justice Lowell Goddard may be off to the United Kingdom for the next four years or more to head up a Crown inquiry into child sexual abuse but her lingering presence in New Zealand is destined to be felt for some time. Late last week, Ms Goddard’s judicial colleagues – Court of Appeal Judge John Wild and High Court Judges Graham Lang and Alan MacKenzie – teamed up to refuse to allow an appeal despite conceding the lay appellant was correct on his grounds Justice Goddard failed to understand her jurisdiction and elementary criminal statute in a dismissal judgment. Two weeks ago, Goddard told British MPs she did not understand the term ‘the establishment’, stating she had to […]

Yesterday, before a panel of British MPs, Lowell Goddard replied there is no such thing as ‘the establishment’ in New Zealand – indeed, claimed she did not understand the term and needed it explained to her. She also claimed there was no truth to kiwisfirst’s allegation she covered up judicial corruption by disgraced Judge Michael Lance – who she later had appointed as her deputy chair at the Independent Police Complaints Authority (now the Independent Police Conduct Authority). Story photo is Ms Goddard posing with Lance upon his appointment. Ms Goddard last week was tapped to head an official inquiry by Home Secretary Theresa May into broad child sex abuse allegations in Great Britain. Rather than address the facts published […]

Official comments from the United Kingdom lauding the appointment of New Zealand High Court Justice Lowell Goddard to head an Inquiry into child sexual abuse have legal doyens in New Zealand privately scratching their heads. Goddard J scored dead last in the 2014 Judge Survey Results in New Zealand, with many lawyers extremely critical of Lowell’s opportunistic public stances, liberties with the truth and contrarian judgments. But let us not be burdened by the empirical evidence when we should celebrate Home Secretary Theresa May appointing any Kiwi after the first two appointees (Fiona Woolf and Elizabeth Butler-Sloss) crashed and burned. Labour MP Simon Danczuk also released a statement saying, “It is obvious that the home secretary has cast the net far and […]

Quote of week

“Transparency International-Secretariat has been informed of the informal advice from the Police, Serious Fraud Office and the judiciary that (complaints against the NZ chapter's chairperson) should be ignored.”
- as recorded in the Board Minutes of Transparency International New Zealand, March 2014